Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Our 4th

I am finally getting around to posting about our 4th of July. Writing about and posting pictures from vacation took up a lot of time! So just a few days late on the holiday, but better late than never I guess.

Things were pretty low key for us this 4th of July since we were still resting and recovering from our week of vacation and trying to get the house back in order and catch up on laundry. It was SO nice having that long weekend after getting back from the beach on Saturday. And Garrison and I were completely spoiled having daddy with us 24/7 for 10 days. I think we all suffered withdrawals on Tuesday!

We slept in a little later than normal on Monday, then had breakfast together and got started on laundry before me and the little man made our 4th of July dessert, Chocolate Chip Delight. I've made it every year since we had Garrison and this year he could actually help and follow my directions and really participate. Last year he helped too... sort of. I can't believe how much he's grown and changed. We got out everything we needed and he moved his stool over to the counter and did a great job listening to me and following my directions. I was very proud of him because I knew things could turn out super messy and crazy if he didn't listen and do exactly what I said. We started by dipping our cookies in milk and making a layer inside the casserole dish, then adding a layer of cool whip (which he watched me do) and then dipping cookies for another layer, etc.

After we finished all of our layers, we sorted a bag of M&M's keeping the red and blue ones together in a pile and all the other colors together in a pile. He finally got to eat something once we opened up the M&M's. He asked to eat a couple of the cookies while we were dipping but I knew we'd need them all so I made him wait. He showed great self-control for a sweets-loving 2 year old!

For the past 2 years I've decorated with M&M's myself and written USA on top and tried to make my simple, no bake dessert patriotic and cute... so creative I know. This year I let Garrison put on all the red and blue M&M's himself wherever he wanted. It made our little dessert so special to us both because he helped out so much. We also talked about why we were using red and blue and that it was America's birthday. I really didn't know if he understood anything I was saying, but I at least wanted to attempt to explain what we were celebrating. Terrell told me later that while him and Garrison were playing, he yelled out "Happy Birthday Merica!" out of the blue. Guess he got the jist of it. =)

The finished product. As Garrison likes to say, "I want some surt that mama,Garrsin made!"

After we finished our dessert we chilled it in the freezer and all got ready to go out for lunch. We decided on Applebee's... that's sort of become a new tradition. Every year since we've lived in Covington we've always ending up having a meal at Applebee's on the 4th of July or the day before. Another tradition is 4th of July family pictures...

We enjoyed our low key day together before jumping back into our normal routine on Tuesday.